Microsoft shoves a computer into a room

Microsoft boffins are planning to turn an entire room into one giant computing surface. According to Cnet Andy Wilson and his team are designing LightSpace which turns a 3 meter by 2 meter room into a surface computer.

The rooms floor, table, and a wall are all interactive. It does all this using projectors and depth-sensing cameras. LightSpace lets a user do is take an object from, say a table, and sweep it into their hand or a plate or other object. "You see it in your hand," Wilson said in an interview today. "That's a very different interaction than just a surface."

One idea of using LightSpace to power some kind of next-generation conference room and hand out papers and throw them onto a wall. Wilson says he sees a lot of potential for moving to the use of three-dimensional objects, though that would certainly add cost and might require a user to wear special glasses.